This project looks to compare school data between States on the West Coast. More specifically, the project aims to make conclusions on areas of improvement within Washington, Oregon, and California and display them in a meaningful way. This is important because well displayed data can be a strong tool to gain attention toward issues within the school systems. This data focuses on three different categories; enrolment, financials, and academic achievement. Enrollment is taken from the National Center for Education Statistics. Financials is taken from the United States Census Bureau’s annual survey of school system finances. Academic achievement comes from the Nations report card that provides national and state results in main school subjects.
When looking at these two data sets we were able to find a lot of interesting information regarding lower level education within our country and more specifically the West Coast. We found that the total number of students in the states of Washington, Oregon, and California is 7290644. Out of all of the schools in these three states we also found that the largest school has 5912 total students. These statistics give us a sense of the scale of the education system within the West Coast. Additionally, out of all of these schools we found that 10 percent of them are actually charter schools. One common concern regarding our country’s education system is lack of teachers compared to students in a school. We found that in the West Coast the average number of students to a teacher is 21. Finally, another key statistic we found was that, out of all students on the West Coast, 55 percent of them qualify for free or reduced lunch at their school.
Here is a Public Elementary-Secondary Education financial breakdown for the states of California, Oregon, and Washington (Selected years: 2002-2016). The data was grouped by State and summarize calculations were done by finding the mean of the expenditures/revnues for every three years. The purpose of this grouping is to showcase a time series of the cash flows of the educational system finances for the chosen states.
| Year | State | Instruction EXP | Service EXP | Capital Layout EXP | Other EXP | Total Average Expenditure | Total Average Revenue | Outstanding Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002-2004 | CALIFORNIA | 29259896 | 16645927 | 7860871 | 2975396 | 59620688 | 58235079 | -1385609 |
| 2005-2007 | CALIFORNIA | 32714378 | 19260311 | 10109943 | 3286416 | 69381309 | 66997198 | -2384111 |
| 2008-2010 | CALIFORNIA | 35605862 | 21569765 | 8473287 | 3669495 | 74204021 | 71980848 | -2223173 |
| 2011-2013 | CALIFORNIA | 34211058 | 20418439 | 6473495 | 3478754 | 69922234 | 69612746 | -309488 |
| 2014-2016 | CALIFORNIA | 39026215 | 23718147 | 6428046 | 3777352 | 78730967 | 79951477 | 1220510 |
| 2002-2004 | OREGON | 2477559 | 1567558 | 549945 | 171959 | 5117700 | 4816902 | -300798 |
| 2005-2007 | OREGON | 2834917 | 1797414 | 325893 | 189990 | 5539554 | 5366594 | -172960 |
| 2008-2010 | OREGON | 3251619 | 2079101 | 666151 | 215476 | 6506863 | 6162073 | -344790 |
| 2011-2013 | OREGON | 3257766 | 2065602 | 417965 | 227292 | 6286641 | 6104951 | -181690 |
| 2014-2016 | OREGON | 3641021 | 2263649 | 491566 | 249502 | 6989066 | 7050376 | 61310 |
| 2002-2004 | WASHINGTON | 4320537 | 2507991 | 1148128 | 395506 | 8725008 | 8535587 | -189421 |
| 2005-2007 | WASHINGTON | 4868311 | 2857718 | 1446491 | 444306 | 9999206 | 9723938 | -275268 |
| 2008-2010 | WASHINGTON | 5826829 | 3412317 | 1710898 | 504833 | 11913037 | 11713109 | -199928 |
| 2011-2013 | WASHINGTON | 5928417 | 3646851 | 1487470 | 525435 | 12071282 | 12034585 | -36697 |
| 2014-2016 | WASHINGTON | 6621382 | 4483732 | 1776981 | 558040 | 13896578 | 13904668 | 8090 |
Take-Aways: When comparing all three states, we can see that California’s educational finances accumulated, on average, the largest total expenditures. We can also see that for awhile they’ve face a lot of outstanding debt. This could be interpreted as a funding flaw California faces within their educational system.
Though its also important to note that, California wasn’t the only state that dealt with outstanding finacial debts. Oregon and Washington also faced some financials issues throughout 2002 to 2013. It wasn’t until recently, around 2014-2016, that these states started to end their year debt free.
The purpose of this chart is to compare the average teacher to student ratio between the three West Coast States.
Some interesting observations:
The purpose of this chart is to identify any trends between the average student/teacher ratio and the average number of students, sorted by the type of locale(area). This chart can give us insight into what types of areas typically have high student/teacher ratios and a high number of students. These two continuous variables should move together as we look at more densely populated areas; this chart useful in comparing two continuous variables grouped by a categorical variable.
A couple observations can be made from this chart.
This chart is useful in analyzing continuous variables over time. The purpose of this chart is to identify any trends over time between 1993 and 2016 with the student enrollment of west coast states, Washington, Oregon, and California. This chart is not only useful in showing any changes in enrollment over time, but it allows us to see the differences between states.
A couple observations can be made from this chart.